when life gives you lace for brains, blog about it

Monthly Archives: April 2015

Facebook has been doing this sneaky little thing where pictures from years ago pop up in your news feed all over again. This is what popped up in mine as having been posted 4 years ago today. Seeing this picture in my Facebook feed after all this time brought me back there. Being diagnosed was, as I’ve written about so many times, the shock of my life. But the time period just prior to it (when this picture was taken) was so strange and sad for me.

I had just returned from Mexico the week prior on my very first spring break trip ever with my dearest friend C and my new(ish) girlfriend, K. It was the very first trip K and I ever took together. I was soooo excited about the trip to Mexico! And it was of course memorable and fun, but I also struggled tremendously on this trip with fatigue, a new symptom. I was frustrated and K was too. We fought more than once about the fact that I was seemingly uninterested in exploring and really interested in sleeping. A lot. I tried to push myself because I couldn’t think of a good reason why I was so tired. Hindsight…

The day after arriving I developed a rash on my back. It didn’t seem like a big deal but it was a little itchy. It ended up being shingles though, which is kind of a big deal. Which led to this photo of the gigantic anti-viral pills I had to take. I remember looking at that pill that morning and just feeling so overwhelmed with the path I was on. How everything I was doing to feel better just seemed to take me further down the wormhole to something worse. I felt defeated and sick.

It’s hard to explain what it means to me when I look at this photo. I feel sadness and confusion and I suppose a little bit of grief and compassion for the person who took that photo.